I had a very strong feeling that the Council was going to approve the Arcadia application before the hearing day. I went to watch some history and sat in the gallery. It was very sad to see the end of Ealing centre as I have known it for decades. It is pitiful that all the Council seems to want to do, is turn the borough into a high rise dormitory rather than create new wealth with new additional business undertakings. (Sad also that Councillor Millican and others cannot publicly engage on this point). I found it hard to know who was who, but clearly there were one or two Councillors who waffled on endlessly, just filling time before the vote. A really good example of people loving the sound of their own voices. Few powers of intelligent analysis were in evidence that evening. But perhaps that is how the world of Councils go round when planning decisions are actually made. Councillor Phil Taylor spoke quietly and said little – not surprising after the debates on the internet. He supported the application. The piles of paper which were available for onlookers in the public gallery were extremely massive and would have taken hours and hours (if not weeks) of reading. Whether the planning officer did her job correctly was difficult to ascertain for a layman to ascertain. She was dealing with an enormously complex issue. I am sure she was very experienced. All the planning decision making Councillors voted in favour bar the chair who voted against. His comment was that since all the others had voted in favour, then why not cast a vote against. – or words to that effect. To me the tone of those remarks sounded contemptuous and supercilious. One of the options of course is to ask for the decision to be reviewed, and perhaps for the Council papers to be perused under the Freedom of Information Act, but happy reading and technical research to s/he who wishes to take on such a task.So it is easy to join the army of hostility and suspicion and be swept along by crowd bigotry. But on the question of that famous queue you should tread very carefully. Were any of you, like me, in that queue? Do any of you have first hand evidence of who was there and who came and went and who was in the gallery? It seems not. If I am right, then I would counsel some of you to base some of your opinions on this website with greater care.I stood and froze for at least 90 minutes until the doors opened to give access to the officer dishing out the tickets to the gallery. I think the doors for all planning applications open at 4 p.m. I stood immediately behind the queue of so called students as I was next in line. Actually they were people in probably their early to late thirties in suits or similar office wear. Many had cases bulging with papers. I wondered who they might be. They did not seem to talk about the case but if anything were talking socially. They seemed all to know each other. I kind of suspected that these people were associated with the developers owing to the suits and the bulging papers. They were perhaps about ten to twelve in number. Far less than the capacity of the gallery. In front of them there were perhaps three or four older people. Behind me there were not many more as I recall. Several people behind me kept coming and going. They were like me definitely not students (except perhaps of the Third Age). If any of you had really wanted to sit in the gallery, then had you arrived in sufficient time, I saw nothing to suggest that you would have been turned away.After getting my gallery ticket I returned just before the hearing. Around where I sat in the gallery most people were 50+. Hostile and cynical were they. There were younger people but some clearly were residents. There were middle aged people in the gallery – some in suits making me think some were interested in the application being approved, but not all. And of course we know that there are many who wanted this decision as there is a lot of money at stake. Nobody while I was there when the main decision was made booed or shouted from the gallery (quite disappointing really). Had I been a Councillor (something this event most assuredly decided me never to be), I would have looked up to see a cross section of society. But they never seemed to look up.The Tories won because of the tram according to most people I speak to. Will they lose because of overdevelopment, or will we forget and keep them in because we blame Gordon Brown for the mess we are in (and which the Council so far apart from providing free parking in January has done little about)?It’s up to you - and the opinion of anyone who does not rely on proper evidence (or who does not vote), is not worth the paper it is written on. I rest my case.
George Knox ● 6445d